


A Question of Fish and Chips

by PhryneFicathon, Scruggzi



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: Banter, Canon Compliant, F/M, Flirting, Fluff, Friendship, only related to the prompt by my perverse sense of humour, snacking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-22
Updated: 2018-12-22
Packaged: 2019-09-24 17:28:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17104970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PhryneFicathon/pseuds/PhryneFicathon, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scruggzi/pseuds/Scruggzi
Summary: During the case at Queenscliff Phryne and Jack relax with some fish and chips





	A Question of Fish and Chips

**Author's Note:**

  * For [afteriwake](https://archiveofourown.org/users/afteriwake/gifts).



> Prompt: _"The first question. The question that must never be answered, hidden in plain sight. The question you've been running from all your life." - Dorium, "Doctor Who"_
> 
> This fic really has nothing to do with the prompt, I just liked the idea of answering such a dramatic prompt with a really innocuous question. Also I was hungry!

* * *

_"The first question. The question that must never be answered, hidden in plain sight. The question you've been running from all your life."_

_\- Dorium, "Doctor Who"_

* * *

 

“Should we get chips, Jack?” Phryne was eyeing the fish and chip stand with interest, tempted by the delicious, savoury smells that wafted out across the beach.

“I think I could be persuaded. My treat?” Jack smiled at her. One of the rare smiles that stretched across his whole face rather than lurking sardonically at the corners of his mouth. She was getting quite fond of them.

“Oh? And what have I done to deserve such munificence? Careful Jack, I’ll start to think you like me.”

“I wouldn’t go that far, but if it wasn’t for your apparent inability to keep your hands off my crime scenes, I’d probably be stuck behind a desk right now. A little gratitude is probably in order.”

He breathed in a deep lungful of fresh, salt air, palming the shells he had collected in the pocket of his overcoat. Yes, a stroll along the beach with Miss Fisher on his arm was infinitely preferable to the stack of arrest reports he had left on his desk.

“Our crime scene, Jack! You said so yourself, I was the first one here,” Phryne corrected him. They were clearly partners in this venture, if only the stubborn man would admit it. He did it on purpose just to hear her contradict him – she was almost certain of it.

He tilted his head in acknowledgement. “I suppose it could be worse. If you were to take up piracy, we’d have a hell of a job trying to catch you.”

“Ha! No-one’s caught me yet, Jack.” She laughed, not entirely truthfully and with just a hint that _he_ might, if he tried. She was determined to reel him in eventually.

His smile this time was one of those enigmatic ones that she couldn’t quite read yet. Amusement, was there yes, but not as if he was laughing at her. She could feel an undercurrent of something in his quiet observation, telegraphed subtly in the lines around his eyes; a code she couldn’t quite decipher. It was intriguing and infuriating, but she’d never been bested at this game before and she wasn’t about to start now.

Catching people was of course Jack’s stock in trade, but he couldn’t help but feel deeply relieved that they were in in fact on the same side as far as the law was concerned. Well, evidence tampering and the occasional break and enter aside. She’d probably be more than a match for him as a master criminal, but he also suspected that he’d rather she escaped than have to be the man who put her behind bars. Some people were just meant to be free.

“You could always join me. A life on the open waves, nothing but sea and sky; adventures at every port.” Phryne’s eyes were sparkling, blue as the ocean as she relived this childhood fantasy.

It was such a foolish notion Jack knew, but some deeply buried part of him sang at the idea of throwing his old life overboard and sailing out to sea. Out into the unknown and unplanned for.

He snorted, “Not if it means drinking Flint’s Rum. I hear Albert was rather the worse for wear.”

“He’s not the best at holding his drink,” she agreed. “You should have seen him after he challenged Mac and I to a drinking contest.”

Jack thought back – a little hazily – to Phryne’s birthday party. He seemed to remember that between the two of them Phryne and Mac had put away enough champagne to float, if not a whole pirate ship, then at least a small dingy.

“And he survived?”

“Cec had to intervene before he was sick on the dining room rug.”

Jack smirked at this, he had been forced to deal with a drunken Albert Johnson on more than one occasion himself, although he usually just left the man in a cell to sleep it off.

“A lucky escape all round then.”

“I’ll say, that rug is Persian.”

They had reached the fish and chip stand, a small, white, wooden shed, not unlike a larger version of the bathing boxes that lined the beach at St Kilda. This one included a kiosk where you could order your food. The boy behind the counter looked younger than Jane, dark haired, with a smattering of freckles across a sun-browned face.

“What’cha fancy, Mister?” he asked Jack, who had been eyeing the menu. The smell of battered whiting making his mouth water.

Jack couldn’t resist catching Phryne’s eye for a fraction of a second before he answered.

“Fish and chips?” he asked her, and she nodded enthusiastically.

“Yes please. Might was well wrap them up together,” Phryne added, to the lad behind the counter. She shrugged at Jack who had raised an eyebrow at this gratuitous display of culinary intimacy. “No use making extra rubbish, Inspector.”

Having paid and thanked the boy, the two detectives found themselves a mousehole. Well, a comfy patch under the pier at least. It was a little further down the beach than the place Phryne had found poor Wally Sterling’s body. She pointed the spot out to Jack as they passed, but the water had washed it clean and there was nothing more to be learned there.

She really should stop taking evidence off of corpses, Jack thought. It was bound to cause a hell of a fuss down the line if anyone ever thought to check the somewhat fudged chain of custody records. Then again – if she hadn’t taken it this time, odds were Sargent Baxter would have left it all on the beach to be washed away with everything else. There really was something to be said for working with someone who actually knew what they were doing, it made the job so much more fun.

Yes…Miss Fisher was quite possibly too clever for her own good, and definitely far too clever for his. He needed to be on his guard, keep his wits about him at all times. Who knew what she might persuade him to do if he didn’t? He was well aware that a certain, fairly sizeable, part of him was rather keen on being persuaded, although he was doing his best to ignore it. The damn thing had never acted rationally.

They settled into their quiet spot to wait; their meal unwrapped, they dug in, enjoying the crisp, greasy delight of the fresh caught fish and the rich, salty potatoes. Phryne, of course, made a bit of a show of licking her fingers clean in the hopes of making Jack blush, but the man was undeterred. In fact she was almost convinced he was paying her back in kind. She saw the tiniest hint of a pink tongue against his lower lip and the sight seemed practically indecent. He must know what he was doing, surely? He couldn’t really be oblivious to the effect he had on her? He was a detective for heaven’s sake.

“Mmm. This fish is better than the place at St Kilda.” He broke off another large piece and popped it into his mouth. “It was always a treat for us as kids, fish and chips on the beach. Our mum used to take us swimming, me and my brother, then fish and chips for supper afterwards.”

“You have a brother, Jack?” Phryne asked, delighted at this new tidbit of information.

“Had,” he explained. “Daniel, he never came home.”

Phryne nodded sadly in understanding. It was an all too common story, but she was pleased it was one Jack was willing to share with her. He was such a private man, so full of secrets. Every little revelation felt like a piece of a puzzle she was slowly assembling, each one giving her another little insight into the man he was.

“Janey and I used to hang around when they closed and beg for leftover chips. Fish though was a rare treat.”

“When you managed to persuade an unsuspecting young man to buy you some?”

She dismissed that comment with an eyebrow raise that said all that needed to be said.

“Mostly old women, actually. They thought we needed feeding up.”

She realised suddenly that apart from Mac, Jack was the only person she really talked to about Janey. It was a subject still so fraught with guilt that for the most part she avoided it entirely, but with him it felt good to remember those happy times together. It was an odd feeling. For all her flirtations and easy affection, she was not usually comfortable with that kind of intimacy.

Slightly discomfited, she took refuge in her favourite sport: making Jack Robinson squirm. Tearing off another piece of fish she brought it delicately to her lips, eating it slowly and sucking the salt off of her fingers with exaggerated care. Perhaps she caught a slight tensing around his eyes which suggested he was not unaffected, but she could have been imagining it.

Jack was feeling a strange and unaccustomed ambivalence. On the one hand, Phryne was eating fried fish in a way that practically violated every indecency law on the book and his stoicism was only proof against so much. On the other, he couldn’t help realising that he felt more relaxed in her company than he did with almost anyone else. He had been content in his life and work for so many years, a huge victory after the darkness that had followed the war; but it had been a long time since he had been happy. The comparison, now he was faced with it, was not unlike that of a puddle and the Pacific Ocean. It was not a feeling he entirely trusted.

A slightly awkward silence stretched between them as they finished the remainder of their food and Phryne, becoming impatient, began to speculate about how long they might have to wait for their quarry. It was with a strange mixture of relief and disappointment that they heard the long-anticipated fight break out above their heads.

Justice was calling, and there was nothing either of them liked better than the thrill of the chase.


End file.
